The much anticipated public hearing on the Charter Commission’s draft charter is happening at 7 p.m. tonight at Newton City Hall. Use this thread to share comments or thoughts about the proposed charter and/or what happens at tonight’s hearing.
OPEN THREAD: Charter Commission public hearing
by Village 14 | Mar 15, 2017 | Newton | 25 comments
Please come share your thoughts with us tonight! This is the last public forum before we debate and propose our final charter recommendation.
Please also note that if you can’t make it, you can share your thoughts by emailing [email protected] or by attending our following Charter Commission discussion on March 29th, where the first 20 minutes will be set aside for public comment.
Has the Charter Commission done any polling on some of the changes they’ll be proposing? Seems like that may be a good idea.
I went last night. As expected there were a number of people who are concerned about losing their ward only city councilor. I have no strong allegiance to my ward councilor as he is not responsive to me, unlike one of our at large councilors and many other councilors from across the city that promptly respond when I contact them.
It occurred to me that our need for representation goes beyond where we live; it is who we are and our needs at the moment and into the future. People struggling financially, or someone with young children, older residents, business owners, a person with a disability, etc. have different needs and need champions on the council. By making all 12 seats voted on at large, 1 from each ward and 4 with no residency requirement may give us the best chance to see these voices heard more clearly. And certainly with a smaller board more accountability and more strategic decisions will be possible.
Was the cost of a smaller council addressed? I was not able to attend the meeting and am curious if we have any idea of what the cost of full time counselors would be compared to our current part time ones.
@Greg: I hate this new set-up! I had a long complicated comment and then forgot to put my name and e-mail in and lost the whole thing! GRUMP GRUMP GRUMP!!!!
@Groot: Only one speaker mentioned the cost of full-time Councilors, but no figures were presented. I don’t recall the Commission ever studying the issue.
BTW: My guesstimate is that 3/4 or more of the speakers spoke out against the proposed Charter. Most of the speakers passionately and vehemently disliked the elimination of the directly elected Ward Councilor to create an all at-Large Council. The Commission will soon have to weigh the strength of the voting public’s interest in defeating their proposal against their devotion to what they have proposed.
To be continued March 29 at their next scheduled Commission meeting.
@Sallee: I counted, don’t remember the exact number, but those “against” which included a variety of complaints were more than 1/2, but definitely not 3/4. We would also love to continue hearing from people on March 29th and over email.
@Groot: We haven’t spent significant time on the cost of full time councilors because we aren’t proposing full time councilors. 12 is an above average number of councilors and almost every council in the state is part time. I am certain that the high quality of talent in Newton will provide us with councilors that are more than capable of handling the workload.
That being said, I will once again use this as an opportunity to point out that our councilors and school committee members are underpaid by every possible metric and should be better compensated to ensure a more diverse pool of candidates can consider running for office.
While the members of the commission uniformly agree that city councilors should receive higher compensation, the actual compensation isn’t a charter issue. The charter lays out the process and timeline for an increase in compensation
All but a handful of Massachusetts cities have part time councils with 9-13 members, with a wide salary range from community to community. Cambridge is the only comparable size city with full time councilors and it has a city manager form of government.
As stated on page 1 of the preliminary report, the charter commission set the following objectives as guidelines for its work: to develop a more effective, responsive city structure, one that encouraged greater public participation in and a better understanding of the city government. Efficiency has NOT been an objective because government is complicated, sometimes messy, and often inefficient so that all voices can be heard.
Why not reach a compromise on the Ward Councilors and gain almost total support for a new Charter? People want and deserve local representation. It appears to me that having 8 Ward Councilors and 4 Councilors elected City-wide is the best solution. Otherwise, this whole proposal could potentially be voted down. Politics is after all the art of compromise.
First, thanks to all the charter commission members for a long evening of listening to feedback and for their work. I know the process has involved a lot of listening along the way and some of it must become repetitive.
@Jane — I have seen the rejection of the efficiency goal come up a couple of times now. Below is the announcement by the commmision for the first public hearing:
http://newtondems.org/dems/2015/12/11/newton-charter-commission-begins-their-work
“2) Charter Commission Public Hearing
Thinking about the goal of greater public participation in government and the effectiveness, responsiveness, and EFFICIENCY of our government, the Charter Commission welcomes public input on the structure, responsibilities, and election of our city government.
Date: Thursday, December 17th, 2015”
EFFICIENCY was one of the three key stated goals the commission, at least in this announcement. Was it decided at some point that it wasn’t a goal? It seems like a good goal as long as it does not come at the expense of more important ones.
Please accept my apologies if the word “efficient” or “efficiency” was used at any point as part of our publicity as the Commission began its work. I looked after most of the communications, website updates, etc. and there were no doubt errors, especially early on.
Thank you all so much.
Hmmm, sounds like someone made the mistake of revealing the real objective. Oops.
Jack,
We’ve had discussions about all topics and over the course of time, come to a consensus or had a vote to make decisions on issues. I have no doubt that other objectives were discussed, but ultimately, we settled on the three objectives stated on the top half of the first page of the report. The three objectives were bulleted so they would stand out to readers.
You quote a work in progress, but in the end, efficiency was rejected as an objective for the reasons I stated in my previous post: government is not only not efficient, it’s complicated and messy because all voices need to be heard and diverse perspectives addressed..
One of the first motions the commission approved was a public comment period at the beginning of each meeting. We value the input of all voices.
I’m happy to hear that the Charter Commission considered and then rejected “efficiency” as an objective.
Thanks for clarification Jane — I do appreciate the welcoming way you added informal public comment to your meetings. That was certainly something the commission didn’t need to do, and I personally appreciated the opportunity to comment in August while things were still being discussed.
Here I was just pointing out the source when people cite efficiency as a commission goal. It also comes up in news articles on the commission as well. e.g. this April 2016 direct Tab quote : “As long as you can get representation from a smaller number, doing things somewhat more efficiently is probably better,” Kidwell said.
It is also in the core principles of LWV , which helped drive the charter review: “The League of Women Voters believes that efficient and economical government requires competent personnel, the clear assignment of responsibility, adequate financing, and coordination among the different agencies and levels of government.”
In any case, I don’t think anyone would disagree with efficient government as long as, as you say, insuring diverse voices are heard, represented, and reflected in decision making is not seen as waste. As a few folks mentioned last night, with all at-large voting there is a risk the council becoming an echo chamber reflecting the views of 51% of the cities voting residents. The academic paper Susan cited last night seems to basically says cities tend to follow the median sentiment of their residents regardless of structure.
The challenge is to keep the debate we have, but find efficient ways to move toward consensus rather than division through better engagement.
@Jack: What you’re saying is right on the money. From my perspective, it made sense to drop efficiency as a goal because effectiveness better encompassed what we were looking for. Effective for a legislative body, to me, means having a discernible and manageable process that allows legislators to consider and accept or reject the items that come before them with adequate consideration given to all parties involved as well as the best interest of their constituents.
Hi Jack – I’ve worked in the public sector for 43 years and can vouch that it’s not efficient! As a result of my work, I know that we serve a wide range of people who come from different backgrounds and needs and that requires time, effort, and collaboration.
As an aside, I’ve never been a member or the LWV or attended a meeting, so I’m probably not the one to comment on its process. If you want the best information, I’d refer you to the report where the objectives that guided our work are stated on page 1.
As people noted last night, we’ve been very open and transparent in our thinking. For me, that’s meant that I may enter Room 211 with one perspective, and change my thinking after hearing what others have to say during the public comment segment or the meeting. For that reason, I’d prefer that my comments within a meeting or from one meeting to the next not be taken out of context.
I hope you’re able to attend the March 29th meeting, because the charter review continues at that time.
@Bryan — I would just clarify that when I say move to consensus, I mean consensus of residents rather than the council itself. We all probably agree on more things than we realize, and we come together better when divergent viewpoints are not just listened to, but reflected and debated within the council itself.
On the big issue, the composition of the council, merits aside, I do share the concern that going from 8 ward councilors to 8 seats with ward residency requirement might be too big a change to be made in a single step. The thing has to win.
On the merits, I do share the concern that all city-wide seats will lead to homogeneity. I am not a fan of the ward-only councilors, but, as a practical matter, they do provide the opportunity for someone not in the Newton mainstream to get into office. While I doubt it is politically possible at this point, I would much preferred to have some sort of ranked preference voting system that would allow voters in the Newton minority to be regularly represented. (By the way, this is a worse problem at the state level. As big a progressive as I am, I do not think it’s good for the Commonwealth that a quarter of the voters expressing party affiliation have no representation in Congress.)
The counter argument is probably going to be, look at the School Committee. It’s got a ward-residency requirement and city-wide voting, and it’s fairly diverse. It’s a solid argument, but I think things will be different for the Council, if only because there will likely be a bigger pool of candidates. I can imagine a full slate of candidates representing the Newton “ins.” There’s no mechanism for the “outs” to focus their preference on a candidate or two.
Probably too late in the process, but 8 seats with ward residency and preference voting for the four at-large seats would be pretty nifty.
Also, it seems odd that the maximum terms for mayor and councilor are longer than the periods between charter review.
@Bryan: Sorry to take this long to answer your challenge to my “estimate” observation of the numbers pro and con the Charter proposal…I didn’t actually count, as I was very focused on digesting all the comments, but a friend who also attended and who is on another Area Council, did his due diligence and reported back to me this morning that his count was 24 con and 9 pro. So my guess of 3/4 against was not far off the mark at 72.7% (24 out of 33).
Its disappointing that amidst strong opposition by many in the community about potentially losing ward representation, the Commission was unable to find a compromise to ensure passage of other worthy changes.
Our politics needs more compromise, and the philosophy of pushing one point of view and hoping to win at the ballot box is at the crux of many of our problems right now as a nation.
I’d hope Newton could do better than that.
Not too late to find a compromise.
Paul, I totally agree. The Ward representation should be preserved. Compromise is needed and hopefully the Charter Commission Members will listen.
The feedback I’ve received has been all over the map. The advocates for the ward councilors have been more vocal, but people email, stop me on the street, talk to me at events, etc. to talk about charter issues and at this point, I haven’t heard a prevailing viewpoint. It certainly makes the decision all the more challenging.
What history do we have on Ward Councilors who have been unseated because of an unpopular decision? I seem to remember Waban residents voting out Christine Samuelson because she dared to suggest that it wasn’t fair that Waban did not have meters like the rest of village centers.
Efficiency – already being re-branded as Effectiveness – over democracy is ludicrous. The theme forwarded by Rappin’ Rob Gifford and Josh Krintzman at the Democratic party meeting last week: Newtonites are too dumb to remember so many councilors is offensive in so many ways. May you go your whole life not knowing who they are and never needing them but the one day you do, there they are, working hard for no money, and that’s the point of having them. Are all Ward Councilors like Lisle Baker, Emily Norton, John Rice, slackers? Is it bad they vote on matters impacting the whole city, just as Newton Reps vote on matters impacting the state? Who benefits from less representation? Who benefits from removing people’s input to shaping the city’s future?